PARIS: take a seat

When I first started thinking about this class, I decided I didn't want to make my poster about Paris. It seemed too obvious and cliché. But then I chatted with people, and I realized I was missing an opportunity. There's no where else in the world I know better than Paris, so I decided to stick with what I know.

I follow a lot of Instagram accounts in Paris, and I see how people are drawn to pretty pictures of buildings. And while that's nice, I realized for my own poster I wanted to go a different direction. Then it came to me one day while walking! (Sometimes I have to remind myself my best ideas don't come in front of my computer). For awhile now I've been posting pictures on my Instagram account (@pretavoyager) with the hashtag #pariscafechairs. I love seeing all the different colors, patterns and chair forms. They're each unique, and equally interesting with the pairing of different cafe tables. Most importantly though, for me the cafe chairs are SO PARIS!

I wanted to keep my tagline simple. Once again it came to me as I was strolling. "Take a seat" (for a minute I was pondering "have a seat" but it seemed too polite for the French ;) ). While so much of travel is about going/doing/seeing, I wanted my poster to be about taking a moment, soaking in what's around you, and being le flaneur – the French are amazing people watchers, which is why cafe chairs typically all face the street! I even visited Grock, who is a major supplier of cafe chairs in Paris (and beyond). There was a really cool video where I could watch each one being made by hand.

I also realized I could develop my tagline into other languages easily "azzeyz-vous" is French. I potentially could make my tagline French and use an asterisk at the bottom to have it in English. I also could expand it to other types of chairs, such as metro chairs, or Fermob chairs (the typical green chairs you see in Parisian gardens).

Because I already have my hashtag #pariscafechairs from my Instagram series I wanted to integrate it into my poster as part of my "campaign". This will make it easy to share and easily allow others to participate.

Stylistically, I wanted to play around and try something new. Before I had my final concept I experimented with papercuts, which was fun, but didn't really work as well once I had my concept. I'm not a very strong illustrator, so that didn't seem to work (although I remembered that Obvious State has a really cool Paris cafe chair poster). Ultimately, as my series started as a photo series, it made sense to use photographs (I experimented a bit with filters).

In terms of typography I looked at Pinterest a lot for ideas, which inspired me to do something that felt "French" but also stay away from looking like everything else already on the internet. I found the fonts I used on Font Squirrel, DaFont, CreativeMarket (good for script fonts, textures and brushes) and ones I already had (I'm a big fan of MyFonts). I also toyed with creating my own "font" using my Wacom tablet.

So this is where I am. I'm definitely open to your feedback, art direction, ideas, etc. Do you know of other good fonts that feel French!? I never shot any of these photos with this project in mind, so I'm still trying to consider what the ideal shoot would look like.